Michael Duncan Smither CNZM (born 29 October 1939)[1] is a New Zealand painter and composer.

While studying he worked part-time in a car spray-paint shop, an occupation which introduced Smither to the use of lacquer-based paints.

Despite experiencing a minor stroke in 2014 and suffering from shingles, Michael Smither continues to paint and has no plans to stop anytime soon.

Domestic life is a major theme of many of his works, these scenes depicted with a rigorous yet idiosyncratic realism.

His approach has changed over the years, with his more recent works having more attention spent on the details of objects, people and places.

The painting took almost 12 years to complete and incorporates Smither's Catholic faith, telling the story of St Francis of Assisi and a wolf that terrorized the Umbrian town of Gubbio in 1220.

This painting of a benchtop covering with cooking implements drying with shadows cast on the bench was described as expressing "the way these rhythms [between object and space] exist equally in the details of daily life as they do in the great natural formations of land and mountains".

[34] Smither's 2001 painting of The Manifesto Café and Wine Bar, a well known venue in the 1990s on Auckland's Queen Street sold in auction in 2020 for $131,600.

With its references to Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, Michael Smither describes it as a proposal of marriage between the seated couple "witnessed in a sidelong glance".

In the 2004 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to the arts.